ocument we became acquainted with the astonishing
fact, that Warburton, early in life, was himself one of those
very dunces whom he has so unmercifully registered in their
Doomsday-book; one who admired the genius of his brothers, and
spoke of Pope with the utmost contempt! [Thus he says,
"Dryden, I observe, borrows for want of leisure, and Pope for
want of genius!"]

[155] Lee introduces Alexander the Great, saying,

"When Glory, like the dazzling eagle, stood
Perch'd on my beaver in the Granic flood,
When Fortune's self my standard trembling bore,
And the pale Fates stood frighted on the shore;
When the Immortals on the billows rode,
And I myself appear'd the leading god!"

In the province of taste Warburton was always at sea without
chart or compass, and was as unlucky in his panegyric on
Milton as on Lee. He calls the "Paradise Regained" "a charming
poem, _nothing inferior_ in the _poetry_ and the _sentiments_
to the Paradise Lost." Such extravagance could only have
proceeded from a critic too little sensible to the essential
requisites of poetry itself.

[156] Such opposite studies shot themselves into the most fantastical
forms in his rocket-writings, whether they streamed in "The
Divine Legation," or sparkled in "The Origin of Romances," or
played about in giving double senses to Virgil, Pope, and
Shakspeare. CHURCHILL, with a good deal of ill-nature and some
truth, describes them:--

"A curate first, he read and read,
And laid in, while he should have fed
The souls of his neglected flock,
Of rending, such a mighty stock,
That he o'ercharged the weary brain
With more than she could well contain;
More than she was with spirit fraught
To turn and methodise to thought;
And which, _like ill-digested food,
To humours turn'd, and not to blood_."

The opinion of BENTLEY, when he saw "The Divine Legation," was
a sensible one. "This man," said he, "has a monstrous
appetite, with a very bad digestion."

The Warburtonians seemed to consider his great work, as the
Bible by which all literary men were to be sworn. LOWTH
ridicules their credulity. "'The Divine Legat